Aristotle

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.

Metaphysica 1-5

Aristotle (ca 330 BC)

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Metaphysica 10f-1045a

Aristotle (ca 330 BC)

Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.

Metaphysica, 1-981b

Aristophanes (ca 444 - 380 BC)

Meton: With the
straight ruler I set
to workTo make
the circle
four-cornered.

[Perhaps the first
allusion to the
problem of squaring
the circle]

Arbuthnot, John

The Reader may here
observe the Force of
Numbers, which can
be successfully
applied, even to
those things, which
one would imagine
are subject to no
Rules. There are
very few things
which we know, which
are not capable of
being reduc'd to a
Mathematical
Reasoning; and when
they cannot it's a
sign our knowledge
of them is very
small and confus'd;
and when a
Mathematical
Reasoning can be had
it's as great a
folly to make use of
any other, as to
grope for a thing in
the dark, when you
have a Candle
standing by you.

Of the Laws of
Chance (1692)

Anonymous

Referee's report:
This paper contains
much that is new and
much that is true.
Unfortunately, that
which is true is not
new and that which
is new is not true.

Anonymous

In J. R. Newman
(ed.), The World
of Mathematics,
New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1956, p.
1452.

Anonymous

Like the crest of a
peacock, like the
gem on the head of a
snake, so is
mathematics at the
head of all
knowledge.

Vedanga
Jyotisa (c. 500
BCE), quoted by G.
G. Joseph in The
Crest of
the Peacock

Anonymous

If thou art able, O
stranger, to find
out all these things
and gather them
together in your
mind, giving all the
relations, thou
shalt depart crowned
with glory and
knowing that thou
hast been adjudged
perfect in this
species of wisdom.

In Ivor Thomas,
"Greek Mathematics,"
in J. R. Newman
(ed.), The World of
Mathematics, New
York: Simon and
Schuster, 1956.

Anglin, W.S.

Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.